If someone asked you, “How do plants take up the water and nutrients they need?” you’d probably tell them through the roots. But did you know that for many crops, those roots aren’t working alone?That’s because most plant species associate with mycorrhizal fungi. What is mycorrhizal fungi? University of Alberta biological scientist JC Cahill says that mycorrhizas are actually the interaction between a fungus and a plant. Although there are many different types of mycorrhizae, the only one crop farmers need to be concerned about is arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), as 65% of plant species associate with it... Grasses like sorghums, millets, rye, triticale, barleys — and oats in particular — are also excellent colonizers...

FARM WALKS WITH THE SOIL FARMERS OF THE YEAR 2018The winners of the FCCT Soil Farmer of the Year competition opened their gates over four days and provided a veritable masterclass in managing soils. Spanning a range of soil types, management systems and enterprises, attending farmers gained insights into their award winning management and a better understanding as to why these farms had been picked as the top three in this year’s competition. The Soil Farmer of the Year Competition, now in its third year, is run by the Farm Carbon Cutting Toolkit and Innovation for Agriculture. The competition aims to find farmers and growers who are engaged with, and passionate about managing their soils in a way which supports productive agriculture, reduces greenhouse gas emissions and builds soil health, organic matter and ultimately, carbon... Angus explained the process that he had gone through over the last three years of using cover crops; starting out using a basic mix of oats, phacelia and buckwheat, gradually adding other species including sunflowers, peas, millet and vetches to create a diverse mix...

If someone asked you, “How do plants take up the water and nutrients they need?” you’d probably tell them through the roots. But did you know that for many crops, those roots aren’t working alone?That’s because most plant species associate with mycorrhizal fungi. What is mycorrhizal fungi? University of Alberta biological scientist JC Cahill says that mycorrhizas are actually the interaction between a fungus and a plant. Although there are many different types of mycorrhizae, the only one crop farmers need to be concerned about is arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), as 65% of plant species associate with it... Grasses like sorghums, millets, rye, triticale, barleys — and oats in particular — are also excellent colonizers...

FARM WALKS WITH THE SOIL FARMERS OF THE YEAR 2018The winners of the FCCT Soil Farmer of the Year competition opened their gates over four days and provided a veritable masterclass in managing soils. Spanning a range of soil types, management systems and enterprises, attending farmers gained insights into their award winning management and a better understanding as to why these farms had been picked as the top three in this year’s competition. The Soil Farmer of the Year Competition, now in its third year, is run by the Farm Carbon Cutting Toolkit and Innovation for Agriculture. The competition aims to find farmers and growers who are engaged with, and passionate about managing their soils in a way which supports productive agriculture, reduces greenhouse gas emissions and builds soil health, organic matter and ultimately, carbon... Angus explained the process that he had gone through over the last three years of using cover crops; starting out using a basic mix of oats, phacelia and buckwheat, gradually adding other species including sunflowers, peas, millet and vetches to create a diverse mix...

Call for Proposals: Innovation Platforms, Agribusinesses and other Multi-stakeholders platforms to Scale Agricultural Technologies in Africa

The goal of this call is to competitively provide support to existing/new innovation Platforms, agribusinesses and other Multi-stakeholders platforms to bring technologies to scale on TAAT commodities value chain: rice, wheat, maize, sorghum/millet, cassava, beans, sweet potatoes, fish and small livestock (including poultry).

This call is only suitable for agribusinesses and multi-stakeholder groups working on the TAAT commodities value chain with business considerations. This call will prioritize the development and operationalization of business cases on the IP using existing technologies and less on conducting research to develop new technologies. As a result of this call, smaller Innovation platforms or clusters may be requested to consolidate into larger operational platforms.

FARA has some seed funding from the African Development Bank to pilot capacity development support. Furthermore, it proposes to facilitate the development of investment portfolio for consideration at national level through the compilation of the applications to this call. Incremental and phased sub-grant funding and other capacity development support valued up to US $20,000 for a period of two (2) years and are expected to be provided to suitably developed proposals on case by case basis.

Application Deadline: June 30th, 2019

Illustration Photo: Tani Fund is experimenting with digital crop management for its partner-farmers. Each lead farmer is given a smart phone loaded with Tani Fund's app, which allows them to send photos and collect data about their crops. The digital element is in its early stages. (credits: UN SG's Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance / Flickr Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0))

Call for Proposals: Innovation Platforms, Agribusinesses and other Multi-stakeholders platforms to Scale Agricultural Technologies in Africa

The goal of this call is to competitively provide support to existing/new innovation Platforms, agribusinesses and other Multi-stakeholders platforms to bring technologies to scale on TAAT commodities value chain: rice, wheat, maize, sorghum/millet, cassava, beans, sweet potatoes, fish and small livestock (including poultry).

This call is only suitable for agribusinesses and multi-stakeholder groups working on the TAAT commodities value chain with business considerations. This call will prioritize the development and operationalization of business cases on the IP using existing technologies and less on conducting research to develop new technologies. As a result of this call, smaller Innovation platforms or clusters may be requested to consolidate into larger operational platforms.

FARA has some seed funding from the African Development Bank to pilot capacity development support. Furthermore, it proposes to facilitate the development of investment portfolio for consideration at national level through the compilation of the applications to this call. Incremental and phased sub-grant funding and other capacity development support valued up to US $20,000 for a period of two (2) years and are expected to be provided to suitably developed proposals on case by case basis.

Application Deadline: June 30th, 2019

Illustration Photo: Tani Fund is experimenting with digital crop management for its partner-farmers. Each lead farmer is given a smart phone loaded with Tani Fund's app, which allows them to send photos and collect data about their crops. The digital element is in its early stages. (credits: UN SG's Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance / Flickr Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0))

The overall goal of the project is to increase the availability of accessible climate smart food for the growing population in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The emphasis of the project implementation will be adopting climate smart practices and technologies among smallholder farmers and agro-enterprises, increasing investments and business growth in climate smart value chains, and creating the enabling environment necessary to ensure the large-scale rollout of market-driven climate smart solutions for the agriculture sector. The project aims to transform, reorient and climate-proof agricultural systems and businesses to the new realities of climate change in a select number of value chains.

Project Objectives

Adoption of climate smart practices and technologies among 300,000 farmers Development of inclusive business cases for 50 agri-business SMEs and 30 cooperatives Climate resilient sustainable food production on 600,000 hectares

Application Deadline: May 31, 2019 at 5:00 pm

Illustration Photo: On 28 and 29 January 2015 Farmers from CCAFS climate-smart villages and the wider Makueni region, attended the two farmer field days organized by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), East Africa and other partners working in Makueni. Farmers learned about pearl millet, sorghum, legumes and cassava technologies and later on went to Josephine Sammy’s farm for onsite trials. (credits: S.Kilungu (CCAFS) / Flickr Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0))

Heartiest congratulations to Lanuakum Imchen, who was declared the 'BEST FARMER' (1st Prize) from North & Northeast India at the Jaivik India Awards 2018, the Indian Organic Industry’s awards function, which were hosted in the national capital on December 28, 2018.

An initiative of the International Competence Centre for Organic Agriculture (ICCOA), the awards recognise contributions of outstanding farmers, stakeholders, state governments and private players of the organic industry.

The Jaivik India Awards 2018 were hosted as part of the Roadshow event for Organics & Millets 2019, the international trade fair for organic and millets-based products, which will take place from January 18 to 20, 2019 at the Palace Grounds, Bengaluru.

"Zeigler hopes the 2016 GAP report will give policymakers a better glimpse into the lives of farmers and other key players in agriculture. Throughout the report are success stories from across the world, from collaborative sorghum and millet research in India that benefits small-scale women farmers to a long-term land improvement project on a North Carolina row-crop farm." http://www.agweb.com/article/how-to-feed-the-need-naa-ben-potter/